'Caveman' or Paleo Diet tops for do-it-yourself weight loss plans

Okay foods on the Caveman diet include nuts, lean meats and seafood. Stay away from grains, starches, and processed foods.

Photograph by: Chris Jackson
, Getty Images

Eating like our distant ancestors is the most popular road to weight loss, according to Consumer Reports.

The February issue of the U.S.-based magazine, available online now at www.ConsumerReports.org, rates both do-it-yourself diets and commercial programs based on response from 9,376 of its dieting readers.

It found the so-called caveman or Paleo Diet came out on top in the do-it-yourself category, yet another victory for the low-carb legions. Like the Atkins diet and the initial stages of the South Beach Diet, it eliminates starchy foods like bread, rice and potatoes and allows lots of lean meats, fish and vegetables.

Weight Watchers took the highest rating among commercial plans, followed by Medifast, Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem. The Canadian Herbal Magic program was not part of the survey. Medifast users reported the greatest weight loss of all the 13 diets with men dropping 20 to 43 pounds loss and women about 14 to 40 pounds. In comparison, men on the Paleo diet lost 10 to 32 pounds, women from six to 20.

Readers endorsed a free mobile application and website called MyFitnessPal for its calorie awareness and food variety in the do-it-yourself category. It doesn’t limit food groups, but instead helps dieters record what they eat on their smart phones. It makes keeping a traditional food diary more efficient because it links to a calorie counter database. The Paleo Diet, which instructs dieters to eat like our ancestors before the advent of farming, ended in a statistical tie with MyFitnessPal for top spot in the same category followed by the Mediterranean Diet and SparkPeople, also an app and website.

Readers lost weight on all diets if they stuck to them, the report concluded, so the key is to find a diet that suits your ability to maintain the required changes. Someone who never cooks might want the convenience of packaged, portion-controlled Jenny Craig food even though it’s more expensive than other options. Likewise, a person who doesn’t mind a highly restricted diet will tolerate being a caveman, but Weight Watchers is better suited to those who want to eat a smaller amount of any food. And keeping a true record of what you eat is a key to success.

Meanwhile, a study published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association which found people who were overweight (a body mass index of 25 to 29) were less likely to die from any cause, compared to people with a normal weight.

More surprisingly, individuals rated as Grade 1 obese (BMI of 30-34) didn’t have a higher mortality rate than slimmer folks. But Grades 2 and 3 obesity (BMI over 35) were linked to a significantly higher risk of death from all causes, said the study which crunched numbers from previous research available through the online medical data bases PubMed and EMBASE until Sept, 2012

To put that in perspective, a five-foot-ten-inch person has a normal BMI between 132 and 167 pounds, is overweight between 172 and 202 pounds, Grade 1 obese between 209 and 236 pounds and Grade 2 obese starting at 243.

At five-foot-five-inches, the weights in pounds are: normal 114-144; overweight at 150-174; Grade 1 obese at 180-204; and Grade 2 obese starting at 210. Public health agencies no longer publish separate BMI tables for men and women.

Scott Lear, a professor of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby and a researcher in St. Paul’s Hospital’s Healthy Heart Program, says the study focuses narrowly on death rates, not overall health.

“This is just looking at whether people are alive or not, (but) there’s the quality of life aspect. It doesn’t discuss people’s ability to be mobile, to enjoy life or whether they have diabetes.

“And outside the issue of disease, there is still a lot of stigma associated with being an obese body type. People who are obese, who have high BMIs, tend to be depressed more often, to have challenges succeeding in the workforce, succeeding in relationships as well.”

The focus on BMI also ignores weight distribution and the fact that carrying pounds around your waist creates a higher health risk than pounds on the hips, he added.

So while previous studies have shown that BMIs at the high end of the normal range are optimal for health, falling into a pattern of yo-yo dieting in an attempt to get there is a danger in itself, said Lear in a telephone interview.

“Weight-cycling, people who lose weight and gain it back, and sometimes gain more back, that’s actually worse than if they maintained their weight. It would be healthier in the long run for someone to be overweight, maintain their weight, be regularly active and eat well, than somebody who goes in fits and starts.”

Since obesity is a key risk factor for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, authors of the JAMA study suggested a counter-intuitive explanation for their findings: that overweight people see their doctors more often for various ailments and are therefore likely receive medical attention which could pick up a serious health problem.

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